Just something I thought was necessary to copy in its entirety. Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle - good insight into the changing journalism industry the way journalists (and those who care about journalism) should view it.

Welcome to a dying industry, journalism grads

Barbara Ehrenreich

Sunday, May 31, 2009

---

The dean gave me some very strict instructions about what to say today. No whining and no crying at the podium. No wringing of hands or gnashing of teeth. Be upbeat, be optimistic, he said - adding that it wouldn't hurt to throw in a few tips about how to apply for food stamps.

• Learn from Japan: Nurture our children 05.31.09

So let's get the worst out of the way right up front: You are going to be trying to carve out a career in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. You are furthermore going to be trying to do so within what appears to be a dying industry. You have abundant skills and talents - it's just not clear that anyone wants to pay you for them.

Well, you are not alone.

How do you think it feels to be an autoworker right now? And I've spent time with plenty of laidoff paper mill workers, construction workers and miners. They've got skills; they've got experience. They just don't have jobs.

So let me be the first to say this to you: Welcome to the American working class.

You won't get rich, unless of course you develop a sideline in blackmail or bank robbery. You'll be living some of the problems you report on - the struggle for health insurance, for child care, for affordable housing. You might never have a cleaning lady. In fact, you might be one. I can't tell you how many writers I know who have moonlighted as cleaning ladies or waitresses. And you know what? They were good writers. And good cleaning ladies too, which is no small thing.

Let me tell you about my own career, which I think is relevant, not because I'm representative or exemplary in any way, but because I've seen some real ups and downs in this business.

I didn't start out to be a freelance writer or a journalist, but after a number of false starts and digressions, I discovered that's what I really loved doing. In about 1980, I was a single mother of two small children, and my work quota was four articles or columns a month. I did my research at the public library. I bought my clothes at Kmart or consignment stores. The kids did not get any special lessons or, when the time came, SAT prep courses.

Then came the fat times, in the '90s, which I realize now were an anomaly in the history of journalism. The industry was booming; editors would take me out for three-course lunches in Manhattan. I'll never forget one of those lunches: It was with the top editor of Esquire, and I was trying to pitch him a story on poverty. He looked increasingly bored as we got through the field greens with goat cheese, the tuna carpaccio and so forth - until we finally got to the death-by-chocolate dessert, and he finally said, "OK, do your thing on poverty - but make it upscale."

It was still an uphill struggle to write what I cared about, but at least I was getting generously paid - up to $10 a word by Time magazine. Imagine that - $10 a word. Most Americans would be happy to make $10 an hour.

Then, bit by bit, it all began to fall apart. The news weeklies: Time let me go in 1997. The book publishing industry was in tatters by 2005. And then the newspapers began to shrink within my hands or actually disappear. I was beginning to feel a certain kinship with blacksmiths and elevator operators when the recession hit in 2008, and every single income stream I had began to dry up.

But it was the recession, of course, that saved me from self-pity. I began to get sick and tired of the typical media recession story - which was about rich people having to cut back on the hours they spend with their personal trainers. All right, I realize those are man-bites-dog stories compared to a story about a laid-off roofer being evicted from his trailer home. But it seemed to me that the recession had absolutely eliminated the poor and the working class from the media consciousness. Once again, they had disappeared from sight.

So a couple of weeks ago, I pitched a certain well-known newspaper a series of reported essays on precisely this topic. They took it - but at about only one-quarter of what they had paid me for writing columns five years ago, barely enough to cover expenses. That bothered me. But then I had a kind of epiphany and realized: I've got to do this anyway. I'm on a mission, and I'll do whatever it takes.

Which brings me back to the subject of journalism as a profession. We are not part of an elite. We are part of the working class, which is exactly how journalists have seen themselves through most of American history - as working stiffs. We can be underpaid, we can be jerked around, we can be laid off arbitrarily - just like any autoworker or mechanic or hotel housekeeper or flight attendant.

But there is this difference: A laid-off autoworker doesn't go into his or her garage and assemble cars by hand. But we - journalists - we can't stop doing what we do.

As long as there is a story to be told, an injustice to be exposed, a mystery to be solved, we will find a way to do it. A recession won't stop us. A dying industry won't stop us. Even poverty won't stop us because we are all on a mission here. That's the meaning of your journalism degree. Do not consider it a certificate promising some sort of entitlement. Consider it a license to fight.

In the '70s, it was gonzo journalism. For us right now, it's guerrilla journalism, and we will not be stopped.

******

Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of "This Land is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation" (Holt Paperbacks, April 2009). She delivered this commencement address to the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism class of 2009 on May 16. Contact us at forum@sfchronicle.com.

Seen and heard.

Had dinner with a friend tonight, and it was an interesting conversation, both of us trying to describe our experiences with the city thus far.

Me: I know this sounds really weird, but I don't feel like New York City is actually much of a ... physical place. It's more of a state of mind or something.

Him: DUDe. I know what you mean. It's more like ... temporary. Everything feels really transient - the people, the events, everything. It's like a city on speed.

Me: Doesn't seem like anyone's ever here for very long, except for the people who've already become a part of the city - the cops, the street sweepers, the beggars. It's one or two years and then PEACE out, NYC.

Him: But at the same time ... I can totally imagine the city standing here on its own even without the people. It's got a life of its own and sometimes I feel like it would breathe better if all the people weren't suffocating it so much.

Life in motion

Movement is key to this city and probably the best reason why people hate and love NYC so much. No one or thing is ever really stagnant, and it constantly feels as though people are surging toward some greater something that I can't, and even they can't, see. But this isn't Amsterdam on Queen's Day, when hoards of people stumble around high and drunk in literal circles (okay, half circles) in search of a happening party or reason to cram their faces with more fatty bliss. Nor is this Hollywood on a Friday night, when girls stuffed into too-tight dresses and guys in Ed Hardy gear take to the streets for nights of unplanned debauchery.

New York's movement is one that encompasses these two elements, sure, but also includes the kind of simultaneous uncertainty and confidence that only this city can create. Everyone's on a journey toward something, pursuing their dreams and sacrificing finances and practicality in the process - the grand difference being that they don't do so with blinders on.

The city's all about shortcuts and detours and having a general sense of direction while pretending to know what's up. I understand now why New Yorkers are notorious for being know-it-all and condescending (though this stereotype has only held true in a rare instance so far). Living in this city means having to build up an aura of knowledge, culture and self-assuredness. If you appear that way from the outside, people are more likely to treat you as such so that you can build yourself up to that level on the inside.

Fake it till you make it.

Not to say that people are fake, just that it's getting easier to tell who's from the city, who's been here and assimilated for a bit, and who's freshly transplanted from another town. The quick pace of NYC streets reveals this well enough - seasoned pros charge into traffic, dodging cars and buses while bobbing along to their iPods. Those who have been here for a few years attempt to get away with this internal calm, but usually balk at the last minute when an errant taxi bludgeons down the street.

The newbies - they wait. They look left and right and then left again for good measure and wait for the rest of the crowds to shuffle over to the other side of the street. Their movement is more about getting to their destination in one piece than showing off their street savvy. They're more willing to wait for the "OK, go" and ironically, don't notice as many things along the way because of this dogged concentration on the end goal.

Street numbers will jump from 42nd to 14th, and it's a question of what each individual will have processed in that numerical gap.

Uncertainty and confidence.

It's a lot to try to embody and learn all in the first bit of this journey, but it's amazing how inspiring and curious walks down NYC streets can be. Time to get me some moving and shaking, and I don't mean no chess or salt.

Small world after all

They say New York City is a melting pot for people from all different races, backgrounds, ages, religions, cultures. People from all over the world congregate in this small corner of the globe with hopes of learning more about themselves and others via close-quarter daily interactions. Given this truth, then, I guess it makes sense that living in the city really makes you realize just how small the world really is.

Take, for instance, the fact that my roommate (randomly assigned) was best friends with my former USC roommate back in third grade, when both of them lived in Oregon.

Or the fact that at least two people I know are settled into the same apartment complex as me.

Or the strange happenstance that my apartment - nay, my room - nay, my BED - is the one and the same as the one my childhood friend occupied for 1.5 years as a student at NYU.

Too many coincidences, too much serendipity, to not reason that everything happens for a reason and that things turn out the way they're supposed to in the end. It's turned from a series of What if's to a steady parade of Can you believe it's? And I think being pleasantly surprised like this is a pretty dang good thing.

The other day, I was in line for student rush tickets for Billy Elliot, and it didn't look as though the theatre was going to be selling any due to poor planning. Having worked in a theatre as an usher (random, I know, but a great experience), I know that the policy is for each theatre to reserve a certain number of tickets as student rush - else it wouldn't be fair to advertise the possibility at all. This was not the case.

The management informed the 20+ students in line that there were only 15 tickets left for the entire show that day - and seeing as how there was still a trickle of last-minute patrons paying full price for the remaining tickets, it didn't look like any would be released to the students.

I counted the students ahead of me in line. Nine. It was a gamble. If each student bought two tickets, it would be pointless to wait. If each bought just one, I was guaranteed to buy the two (one for me, one for the madre) I needed, and thus beat the system, albeit wait in line for a while.

Now, given that student rush meant prime tickets for $24 (regularly priced $160), I didn't want to forfeit the chance of ridiculously cheap tickets by stepping out of line if there was a sliver of a chance I could score the tickets.

As luck would have it, one of the girls ahead of me in line happened to live in the same building as me - we'd met and spoken briefly in the elevator when we both moved in on Sunday. We started chatting (there wasn't much else to do while everyone around us was getting angry and feisty with the management) and realized we knew some of the same people.

We had a good conversation, something I wouldn't have expected from five seconds in an elevator ride and a familiar face.

That's when the ticket manager declared that all tickets were to be sold for half price, no student discounts, at $81.50 - take it or leave it. My friend in line decided to opt out - she'd been banking on student tickets and decided to swing by another time. She gave me her place further up in line and left.

I got the last two tickets.

Small world, huge chances. Strange circumstances, happy surprises.

It's kind of ridiculous, this kind of luck. But I ain't questioning it. (:

Walk the line

Exploring the city with mother in company is at once exhausting and reassuring. It's been a long few days, both physically and mentally. The thing is, on any other trip, with just the two of us traveling, I imagine that we would be at each others' throats by now - but this trip is different. Chalk it up to maturity, to circumstances, to knowing that this is the last trip of its kind for a while. Who knows?

For whatever reason, I can't help just appreciating my mom's company this time around. We've seen a Broadway musical (Billy Elliot), strolled through Central Park, taken a day at the Met, chowed down at Serendipity and Otto and even learned to swing dance. Really, a big part of exploring New York City for this week is just spending time with her. I'm realizing what a big deal this transition is for her as well, letting me come out all the way to the East Coast to do what I love, love what I do.

It's a big gamble, to be sure. Whereas I'm concerned about the job hunt and establishing a solid life here on another coast, she's worried after my safety, my sanity, my ability to work in an upward surge against the NYC population and downturned economy and stay healthy while I'm at it. I can only begin to imagine how difficult it must be to raise a child to a certain point and then just have blind faith in your own parenting skills. Trust that you've done well and instilled a strong sense of morality and social grace within him or her. Trust that he or she will know right from wrong. All the great make-or-break stuff of which parenting is made.

Seeing this move through the eyes of my mom helps me put things into perspective. It's a renewed vigor to succeed - not just to try, but to get somewhere - because this experience really isn't all about me, it's about all my family and friends and support back home. About what it means to have a purpose bigger than yourself and a legitimate reason not to cave in when times get tough.

Mom found out that one of her close college friends is dying today. She's in a coma after three bouts (that's 16 years) with cancer after a butchered surgery. She's a fighter, but still, the news was devastating - and how do you go about comforting a woman who you've always turned to for support? The only thing I can think to do is just listen. Sometimes that's all a person needs.

The news has jolted us both.

Do what you love, love what you do.

When it comes to quality of life, my mom and I have always had different opinions. I love risks, because I know that, after having to go under the knife back in freshman year, nothing is certain. The one thing I'd always depended on - health - became so fragile, and having it put in jeopardy under any circumstance really put everything into perspective. Or more accurately, it minimized the purported "importance" of everything else. Mom has always defined quality of life as being cautious, preparing ahead and thinking for the future. You never know what tomorrow will bring, she's always said.

At least on that point, we agree. Her answer to this uncertainty has been, always, to prepare for the worst and live a safe, by-the-books existence. And there's nothing wrong with this mentality if that's the conclusion that she's come to at this point in her life. But for me, I've always reasoned that this uncertainty means that you have to take chances - find what makes you come alive, and pursue that. Life is short, unexpected twists make it shorter, and there's no way to live a truly satisfying life without acknowledging this.

Having my mom here with me in NYC makes me feel like I've aged a few years. The tables have turned and all of a sudden, I find myself sharing my philosophies with the woman who has always given me such sage advice. And when she tells me stories of her past, of how she's come to this point in her life and her own realizations, I listen.

I think we're understanding each other a lot better now, knowing that the permanence of what we're sharing if fleeting. This transition is trying for us both as we're trying to hold onto the past and grasp the future simultaneously.

So what do you do?

Enjoy it.

Heart, meet sleeve.

... and so it begins.

It's been just a little more than a day since I've touched down in NYC, settled into my flat (yes, I'll always insist on calling it this) by Union Square and attempted to readjust my jetlagged sleep patterns to some semblance of normalcy. It was appropriate that my plane departed from Long Beach last night at that peculiar point of day - twilight (no reference to the book or movie, haven't read or seen either), because as we lifted off over water before making a grand U back toward the east, it was hard to tell whether the day was beginning or ending.

Moving to NYC has been a long-time coming, something I've looked forward to for years upon years on end. And to think that I'm currently sitting in residence, in the thick of it all, is just bizarre. It's not anticlimactic or anything or everything that I imagined it would be.

It.

Just.

Is.

And I love it. People have always said (and I've always agreed) that the best mentality you can have going somewhere is to be anticipating and moving toward something, rather than dreading and fleeing from something. To this end, I've always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be in NYC at some point in my life, better younger than older, better naive than jaded. And now, it's really happening.

Not to say that getting to this point, of starting a new life on a different coast, has always been the end all be all of my existence. Far from it. As much as this experience will be a new book in a collection of many (I hope) that chronicle different fragments of my life, I also recognize that not much will change in the coming weeks, months, years. At the core of it all, it isn't my expectation that everything will miraculously be okay and that my joint work and passion will combine forces to forge a new kind of reality. But it is my hope, and I think that's the more important point.

I don't want everything to be dramatically different - I think at a different point in life I would have expected this much from the fresh start, blank slate that NYC has to offer. Instead, I want to expand my experiences subtly, and revel in the nuances of change.

I hope.

I think.

I dream.

I'm going to get better at blogging regularly. It's a must. I think, over the course of these next few (fill in the blank here), I'll want to share with the blogosphere my thoughts and experiences, because let's face it: part of the thrill of starting anew is being able to bounce ideas and life plans off the people who know you best (and those who know you not at all). What good are life experiences if they aren't shared, right?

Which takes me to today, to now, to the present. I had a good chunk of time to just wander around the surrounding streets yesterday, and I reveled in how good it felt to put foot to pavement and let whimsy guide me through the city. I set my iPod on a playlist, kept one ear earphone free so I could hear NY with above the lull of my soundtrack, and turned corners when I felt like it. I ducked into random shops and snapped photos of memorable sights and people, and chatted to the occasional stranger because hey, why not?

It was fantastic.

All the people I pass by on the street, the life and the things happening everywhere I look - this is like coming home to something I've been missing all this time, but hadn't really known existed. There's so much life here that it almost hurts to breathe in the energy of it all.

And more than that, my feeling is that everyone's in this together, in this pseudo-waiting place. People in NYC are living in the moment, but also looking for THE moment, the spark that will make their hard work, great risks and high rent all worth it. The city's just brimming with passion for life - musicians on the street, thinkers in cafes, even the Evangelist stalking down the street. The feeling is infectious.

Someone wise once told me that everyone comes to New York City looking for something - a job, peace of mind, passion, themselves. It's a city of restless souls sifting through a transition from who they were to who they want to be, and it's the place all my thoughts and experiences have pointed me toward.

More than a physical space, less than a metaphysical place.

Somewhere in between.

LIVE WELL. LOVE MUCH. LAUGH OFTEN.

Here's to a new beginning.

Quotables

It is good
to have an end
to journey toward;
but it is the journey
that matters
in the end.

When Five Fell

Beautiful cinematography.

APA gradumacation speech

After four years of college, everything's finally done. Over. Ending. It's a bittersweet emotion we all have rising to the tops of our throats now, knowing this. We've each absorbed different lessons from our classes, our family and friends, our mentors. Our experiences and our mistakes. For me, from these past four years, the most valuable lesson I've learned is this: I know absolutely nothing about everything.

College has taught me that I know nothing about life, love, or all the things that fall in between. I thought that at the end of receiving a world-class education, I would know without a doubt what friendship, love and life really are. Turns out, though, I really don't. I don't even know what this ambiguous thing we call the future is.

It has been a whirlwind of late nights, long weeks and lazy days, and now, four years later, I don't know that I'm anywhere closer to being a full-fledged "grown-up" than I was four years ago when I first set foot on USC's campus.

These are terrifying realizations to come upon at the end of a four-year journey, I know, but there's an explanation for all this nothingness that I now know so well. Really. I hope (and secretly know) that I'm not the only one who is doubtful about how the knowledge and skills I've acquired at USC will play out in the "real world." Four years, umpteen all-nighters, countless papers, a few strands of sanity and several tens of thousands - scratch that, hundreds of thousands - of dollars later, how much will my ability to properly write a lede or a lab report translate into success in my career?

A whole lot, the way I see it - though not necessarily how you might think.

******

The truth of the matter is, is that college teaches you to embrace your ignorance, and more than that, to use it to your advantage. I'm a sucker for quotes - the cheesier the better - and the one that I have tacked on my wall across from my desk is the one that's stuck with me all these years.

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”

Let me say this again, as the Win Borden quote does, in my opinion, bear repeating.

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

In other words, acknowledging that you know nothing is the start of a beautiful journey to discovering everything. You have to break down a little bit to build yourself back up. You have to jump into things uncertain, or you'll never really jump at all.

******

Let's go back four years. Imagine: it's the beginning of freshman year, and we were adjusting to a lot of new experiences. We were meeting people from all corners of the country and from a wide range of different backgrounds. You shake a lot of people's hands those first few weeks. Name? Major? City? It felt like a never-ending parade of "hi's" and "how are you's." In those first few weeks, you feel like you know a lot, that you're very sure about where you came from and what you want to experience in college.

You define yourself by your major (or lack thereof), because somehow in the gap between high school and college, you were told that you had to be a certain way and a certain type of person in order to succeed. You have to be sure of things before getting started. I know for a fact that for my first few papers for Writing 140, I would research everything, map out my outline and write draft after draft, convinced that what I knew worked in high school would translate into college.

Wrong.

My first paper back was drowned in a sea of red marks, scratches, and that ominous grade at the top of the paper. Didn't I do everything right? Hadn't I gone by-the-books, followed the step-by-step formula of Writing 140 paper success? I had just finished stacks upon stacks of college application essays. I knew myself. I knew how to plug in the parts of an equation to get the answer I was looking for. I knew.

And here I thought I knew how to write! I thought I was going into journalism. I thought I knew. I thought, I thought, I thought.

You learn, jumping from high school to college, that a lot of the things you thought you knew - don't apply. College isn't a new chapter of your life - it's a whole other book. And more than that, a lot of the things I discovered I didn't know, I didn't know I didn't know prior to USC anyway.

Confusing? Case in point:

******

That first semester, I was still under the impression that I was going to be expanding upon my activities from high school. I'm from Cerritos, California, which has a whole lot of Asian Americans, so when I heard about APASS, I thought, "Here's a good way for me to start college with some semblance of familiarity. These are my people." And I didn't think there would be very much the department or the programs or the organizations could teach me that I didn't know already.

This couldn't have been further from the truth. The only thing that I had been right in guessing was that being around Asian Americans would be a form of familiarity. After being involved with Connections!, through which I found two lifelong mentors; PEER Mentoring, through which I was able to act as a mentor; APA Student Welcome, where I was able to engage new students with the USC campus; and Bamboo Offshoot, my pet project of sorts, bringing APA issues to light through writing and reporting - after being involved with so many programs under APASS, I discovered that I really didn't know there was so much I didn't know before.

But just because I didn't know everything didn't mean that I couldn't take action and start to do something.

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

Having APASS as a home base has meant that I gained the foundation and the confidence I needed to venture out and put words into action.

Serving on the APASA board showed me that communication was key to getting programs, events and progress on the roll. It wasn't enough to learn about how the APA community is notoriously silent on campus. I wanted to strengthen my writing skills, my voice, to bolster it.

Speaking with younger students as a PEER mentor made me reflect on my own struggles to balance home life just 20 minutes away and college life here. It wasn't enough to learn about the difficulties of being Asian American and balancing Asian conservatism with American values of individuality. I wanted to help the next incoming classes know more about it.

More than that, I was learning about my own collegiate career as a journalism major. This showed me that it definitely wasn't enough to learn about glass - er, bamboo - ceilings and being a model minority. I wanted to turn that frustration into motivation to do unconventional things, to push boundaries and to succeed in uncommon fields.

So even though I wasn't entirely sure that it was the right step to take - especially after that first paper left me questioning - I knew that the best way I could service my community and myself would be through writing. And these last four years have allowed me to do so.

******

As I look out over the graduating seniors tonight, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about when I say, too, that we've all spent a lot of long hours in activities and organizations and practices and meetings for things outside the classroom, for things we didn't know would pay off in the end. There is no guarantee that any of the steps we've taken during our four years will lead us to where we want to be. But remember:

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

A part of the quote that I didn't explain earlier is that, in addition to having to know nothing to learn something, you have to trust that regardless of what comes next, you'll never know completely that what you're doing is right. And that's the beauty of uncertainty. Graduating at this point in history, at any point of history, means not knowing exactly what you're getting into. Looked at more positively, that means that the world is just full of possibilities. How's that for glass half full?

It's been a long journey, to say the least, to try to figure out what you know, what you knew, what you will discover in the coming years after graduation. It's going to be an amazing adventure, one in which we all learn so much about ourselves and the world we're about to jump into.

USC didn't teach me absolutely nothing, just that I need to recognize that, stepping into the real world, I'll need to embrace that lack of knowledge. It's okay to be unsure. Take risks, ask questions, and enjoy the view when you take that leap of faith.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

Congratulations, class of 2009, and thanks for listening. It's been an honor to speak before you, and I wish you the best in everything life has to offer.

After four years of college, everything's finally done. But it isn't over, ending, el fin. It's just beginning.

Best description.

I'm on a quest to find songs that, put so eloquently by a friend, make you "feel like you're something bigger than yourself."

Clearly, compiling this list is taking precedence over studying for psychology. There's only so much you can read about family dysfunction, marriage and relationships before needing to take a serious break.

New music and HIMYM are my saving graces, har har.

Email from the madre

Dear Joyce,

You have been texting too many and exceeded limit of 500. I've upgraded to 1500 messages for you to avoid paying extra charges (each is $.10). I don't want to encourage you to use too much texting. Please control yourself. There are lots of disadvantage for texting, one thing is bad for your fingers joints and the other one is not concentrating on what you're doing. Remember there was one train accident because the operator was texting while he was operating the train. How terrible it was. Some lady fell on the street because she was texting while she was walking!! Make no sense at all.

Love,
mom

Silence

... is beautiful.

Currently studying up in law and soaking in all the knowledge this little alcove has to offer. I've never felt more collegiate, har har.

I think I want to remember this for a while.

Episodic behavior

Organization is something that I've always craved and yet somehow only been able to achieve halfway. Lists, post-its, calendars, archiving - you name it, I probably do it, all in the name of trying to sort out the important and not-so-important bits of my schedule and life. Prioritize. Rearrange. Budget. Sacrifice.

The problem is, however, that a big part of my motivation to organize and schedule is to form a semblance of routine in the craziness that is the day-to-day - and yet somehow, some way, this motivation isn't enough to fend off the unexpected elements that seem to crop up anyway.

I spent a vast majority of today catching up and organizing a lot of things, preparing for the last stretch. I looked at what I need to do to prepare for finals, for graduation, for my departure from L.A., for so many different occasions that just happen to have definite deadlines.

And seeing things with a finite number of days is a bit jarring.

It becomes a countdown and a horrible march toward the ending of a certain era or period of time. It's like waiting and putting things off because it wouldn't make sense to start what you can't finish in those days, hours, minutes, seconds. It has the potential to be pretty dang depressing.

The upside I can see of this, however, is that I've had a little bit of a revelation. A lot of my life thus far has fallen into segmented parts of a whole, offset by deadlines and lasts and firsts. As much as I enjoy the view that the big picture has to offer, most often, in the moment, it's hard for me to see life as one continuous narrative, strange though that might seem. It's not as though I am able (or want to) drop entire segments and people and events from my consciousness with each end, but I think acknowledging each phase of life as its own separate entity has become a coping mechanism of sorts.

It's easier to accept that things are coming to an end if you know that there is a new beginning tucked away behind that ending.

Maybe this is the only way I know how to deal with inevitable endings. Easier to compartmentalize than to go through life being bummed out by the unavoidable twists and turns that life has to offer.

Everything happens for a reason, and nothing happens by accident.

Even if it doesn't seem it at the time, every road leads to a certain end goal. It's just that most people are afraid of detours and getting lost along the way. But what fun is it to drive in that straight path from Point A to Point B if you know exactly where you're going? No surprises? Straight lists?

Couldn't do it. Everybody needs to organize so they can prepare for the unexpected.

I think a big part of organizing and divvying up life into different segments is to mentally assure ourselves that we have a bit of control over the unpredictability of the future. But really, it's more about the bigger narrative than the small components that make up that narrative. In the long run, capping a certain time frame and pushing it out of mind is probably not the healthiest way to go. It's less emotional involvement that way, but it's a lot less living too.

And that's something that I'm working to change.